Blog: behavioral information

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Marketers should get ahead of Do-Not-Track

Jan 30 2011

 

DM News reported recently that marketers opposed a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposal to implement an online "Do-Not-Track" option that would allow consumers to opt out of all third-party tracking and behaviorally-targeted advertising.  This would enable consumers to universally opt-out of being tracked online or through any digital channels (presumably).  

The marketers quoted in the article voiced opinions ranging from the thoughtful ("this will set back the online digital customer experience by five years") to the selfish ("..it would hurt our ability to get a complete picture").   THE FTC Chairman in proposing the move, predicted that it would be necessary if the industry did not do a better job of self-regulations.   The DMA, predictably, denied that self-regulation was not working without actually providing any proof that it was.   The DMA currently encourages its members to include opt out icons within their sites - much like unsubscribes on email, so that individual sites would stop tracking consumers.  

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How Far Will Your Customers Travel?

May 11 2009

NYC Zip CodesIn this era of making smarter revenue generating and cost control decisions, there is one easily accessible and informative marketing tool ready to tell you a bit more about your customers' behaviors.  If you know your customers, you can certainly do a better job finding prospects with similar purchase patterns.  I'm not talking about models or demographic enhancements (which are all extremely valuable of course). The tool I have in mind uses U.S. postal zip codes as well as longitude and latitude coordinates to map consumer behavior.   I realize that sounds pretty basic and it is.  This simple and powerful tool can show you how far your customers and prospects will travel for your business or service. 

Retailers and Bankers have been calculating the distance a customer or prospect would travel to their location to determine store/branch openings and closings for years.  Consumers are highly convenience-oriented and it doesn't make sense to be on the wrong side of town or even at the wrong intersection.  It also doesn't make sense to have two locations so close together that they are competing against each other for market share.  Zip code-based behavioral information can help marketers better understand how important location and convenience are in their target consumers' decision making process.

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